Is this Castlevania? No, its Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon!

You will hear a lot of people comparing Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon to the Castlevania franchise. And they are totally right to make that comparison. Bloodstained looks a lot like the Castlevania games we saw on the NES and SNES. But is it just a copycat or is Curse of the Moon something special?

Forget Castlevania. We don’t need it anymore. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon for Nintendo Switch is a game that is so much like old school Castlevania, but also, in many ways, its better than those games too.

Lets start with the graphics! You may look at Bloodstained at first and just brush it off as a Castlevania clone. However, that would be a mistake. Bloodstained’s graphics are a lot more detailed than the NES and SNES games. There is so much going on in the foreground and sometimes in the background of each level. The developer, without a doubt, put a lot of hard work into this game.

And the gameplay is very Castlevania but with some neat new twists such as being able to switch to other characters easily! The game also saves every level, has checkpoints that will throw you back a little but not as bad as those older games, and unique allies like a guy who turns into a bat and another that can call on magic powers. Of course, there is also a woman with a whip. You can’t do this type of game without someone having a whip!

Yes, there are many homages to Castlevania in Bloodstained, but there are also things (like the boss fights) that will remind you of Shovel Knight. This game is just that good!

It all boils down to this: the developer of this game also did the new Blaster Master game. That was fantastic! If you haven’t played the new Blaster Master, get to it. And get Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon while you’re at it.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is now available on the Nintendo Switch and 3DS eshops!